Trump Calls for Drug Tests Before Debate With Joe Biden

(L) U.S. President Donald Trump listens to Vice President Mike Pence speak at the daily coronavirus briefing at the White House in Washington on April 19, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images) (R) Then presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden delivers a speech at the William Hicks Anderson Community Center in Wilmington, Dela. on July 28, 2020. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump said in an interview Wednesday that he will seek drug tests for both he and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden ahead of their first debate next month.

Trump told the Washington Examiner in the Oval Office that he is suspicious of what he described as a sudden improvement in Biden’s debate performance during the Democratic primary earlier this year. Trump suggested that it was because of drugs, but he didn’t provide evidence for the claim.

Biden’s campaign hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

“Nobody thought that he was even going to win,” Trump told the newspaper about Biden’s campaign earlier this year. “Because his debate performances were so bad. Frankly, his best performance was against [Sen. Bernie Sanders]. We’re going to call for a drug test, by the way, because his best performance was against Bernie. It wasn’t that he was Winston Churchill because he wasn’t, but it was a normal, boring debate. You know, nothing amazing happened. And we are going to call for a drug test because there’s no way—you can’t do that.”

Trump added that he doesn’t know how the former vice president “could have been so incompetent in his debate performances and then all of a sudden be OK against Bernie.”

Trump said he based it on his own observations and not on any sources or information that was revealed to him.

“My point is, if you go back and watch some of those numerous debates, he was so bad. He wasn’t even coherent. And against Bernie, he was. And we’re calling for a drug test,” the president said. “It is a prizefight,” the president stated. “It’s no different from the gladiators, except we have to use our brain and our mouth. And our body to stand. I want all standing; they want to sit down.”

Trump went on to say that “all I can tell you is that I’m pretty good at this stuff.”

“Go back and watch his performances in some of those debates,” he continued. “He didn’t know where he was. And all of a sudden, he was not good, he was normal, and I don’t understand how. I don’t know if there is or not, but somebody said to me, ‘He must be on drugs.’ I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I’m asking for a drug test. Both candidates. Me, too. I take an aspirin a day.”

Biden and Trump will debate on Sept. 29 before they meet two more times before November’s Election day.